The Nightmare Fighter
by Troll Princess
Summary: Follows "The Opposite of Sibling Rivalry." Ronny's been recording his visions for the Professor. Or has he?


Title: The Nightmare Fighter  
  
Author: Troll Princess  
  
Rating: R, for language  
  
Archive: Knock yourself out. Just give me a holler so I can find it, 'cause I'm needy like that. *g*  
  
Spoilers: X/X2. Takes place two months after "The Opposite of Sibling Rivalry."  
  
Disclaimer: Can't say as I own any of the characters contained within this story. You know, what with the rabid foaming lawyers telling me I don't and all. The title is taken from the poem "The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner."  
  
Author's Note: "Sibling Rivalry" was only supposed to be a one-shot deal, but it had such a good response (and thanks to everybody who sent feedback, which does taste kinda like chocolate chip cookie dough, if you can believe it) that my brain spit out another Ronny story. And considering it hasn't spit anything else out all day on my muse's orders, I figured, what the hey?  
  
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The Nightmare Fighter  
  
by Troll Princess  
  
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... so the notebook I've been using for it, for writing down the dreams like the Professor asked me to, is one of those mottled cover ones that you get for two bucks at 7-11 or something kind of like it. And I just --  
  
It's freaky, all right? I mean, I thought the dreams and the visions and shit were bad before I came here, but I guess hanging out with the Leather Quints will do that to a person.  
  
Correction. Will do that to a precog.  
  
Look, it's not like I'm not getting used to it. And it's not like I'm bugging anybody important, because it's just me and Bobby sharing a room these days and Bobby *has* to put up with all my nighttime antics and shit due to the whole blood relative thing. But it can't be all that fun a ride for the guy, me rolling around in the other bed every third night if I'm lucky, every night for a week straight if I'm not. Excess heat rising off of me in thick, choking waves, so hot and heavy the poor jerk's started putting up ice walls between our beds just in case. Me yammering in my sleep, sometimes making sense, sometimes not.   
  
Once I spoke Swahili. Jesus, I don't even *know* Swahili. I can barely even spell it, but apparently, I was talking up a storm in it.  
  
Which was probably *why* I was speaking in it. The "storm" bit. So yeah, maybe that was a pun, and yeah, maybe I did intend it.  
  
But anyway, it always ends the same way. With me shooting up in the bed, clothes and sheets practically dripping with sweat, breathing like I just finished the Boston Marathon in record time.  
  
And that fucking notebook, clutched to my chest like a cheap, cardboard shield.  
  
It starts that way, and it ends hours later, after I've scribbled down everything I can remember and stopped every once in a while to color in the white blotches on the cover to kill time and keep my brain from frying. As soon as it's all out of my head, every detail and action and consequence of the dream, I can finally relax, even if I've been there long past Bobby's gotten up, dressed and gone for breakfast. I miss more morning classes that way.   
  
Always the same fucking way.  
  
For example, take this morning.  
  
  
  
//and the snow slashes down at us, which is a little excessive for Storm, I'm guessing. But it's got to be her doing, because I get the feeling that's just the kind of cover she'd be using in that situation. Not like it matters, because it's her weather so she's fine, and that's Bobby's element, so he's okay, and the snow steams right off of me as soon as it hits my skin, so it's not like I feel the cold or anything//  
  
"Ronny?" The gentle rap on the dorm room door gets my attention, but I don't bother looking up from the notebook, a part of me knowing that I've really got to write this one down.  
  
Like it's a matter of life or death, me knowing what happens in my head this time.  
  
//so anyway, we sneak in under this awning thing, green or blue -- I don't know which one, but dark, nearly black, shiny, metallic. That's why we don't see the two guys doing sentry detail on top of//  
  
"Ronny, you still sleepin' or what?"   
  
Finally finishing the last word on the page, I slam the notebook shut, as if letting Rogue see what's written there is going to start the apocalypse or something. Hell, who knows? It's not like I've had a vision of *that* yet, but I've had enough of the visions in the notebook come true (with the sole exceptions being the ones that obviously weren't going to happen for years) to get me twitchy about things about that.  
  
She settles next to me on the bed, lightweight and warm and so impossibly beautiful it's still hard to believe she really exists in nature. Or that she's dating my brother. I have a hard time believing any girl would still date Bobby after watching him eat or sitting in the same room with him when the Bruins play. It's never pretty.  
  
"Kurt sent me up to check on you when you didn't come to class," she says. "He figured you'd overslept, but Bobby warned him you were probably still writin' in that thing."  
  
She nods towards the notebook, and I almost wish I could toss it into the trashcan. Or hey, better yet, concentrate hard enough and hold the damn thing until it spontaneously combusts. "I had to get this down. Professor's orders." I give the notebook a dirty look, probably flushing bright red from neck to forehead, and mutter, "A dream journal. Jesus, I don't think there's any way I could feel more like a first-class dork than when I'm writing in this thing." Then I scowl and add, "Unless I were Bobby."   
  
Frowning, Rogue punches me in the upper arm, and I don't need to be a precog to know that's going to leave a bruise.   
  
"Hey!" I say after I wince, wondering if she'll buy it if I tell her I've had a vision that wild rhinos are going to trample her in the gym and she should never work out again.  
  
I reach up to rub at the spot she hit, and Rogue's gaze fixes on my bare fingers. "You're not wearin' your gloves," she says, almost like a warning.  
  
I shrug awkwardly, my hand dropping into my lap. Going back to the motorcycle gloves hadn't been a choice, really. You try deciding between that and going barehanded everywhere you go when your brother's on your phone on the other side of the room the night you show up, eyeing you sideways while you shake your head no over and over again.  
  
Really, Mom? Just ran off like that, huh?  
  
He did what? Well, how serious were the burns?  
  
You know what that means, right, Mom?  
  
Seriously.  
  
Sure, Mom. I'll call you if I see him.  
  
My gaze drifts to the motorcycle gloves crumpled up on the nightstand. "I usually don't put them on until I leave the room. It's kind of like ..." I fumble for words, trying to grab at some phrase or word or something that'll describe the whole --  
  
"Like pretendin' you're normal for a little while?"   
  
I glance sideways to see her hesitant smile, grabbing my meaning even before I could get a hold on it.   
  
She raises her bare hands in midair and wiggles her fingers. "Same boat, remember?"  
  
No need to remind me, really. It's the only reason the two of us had for talking to one another in the first place. Bobby's always been off-limits when it comes to topics of conversation between the two of us. It's just ... it's not like either one of us knows where that conversation's going to end up, or like we want to know.   
  
"You're not wearing your gloves, either," I say, giving her bare fingers a glare.  
  
She scowls playfully and tosses her head, her hair moving in a silky ripple like a pure chocolate waterfall. "My class got cancelled for this mornin', so I figured I'd stay in and bake up a batch of chocolate chip cookies. They're not half as much fun to make while you're wearin' gloves."  
  
And I have to share a smile with her about that one, because our thing is, we keep adding to this list of things that officially suck to try doing while wearing gloves. It's a hell of a lot shorter than I thought it'd be. "That's a good way to keep people from eating the dough. 'Touch the cookie dough, and die. Really.'"  
  
Rogue giggles at that, her eyes lighting up at the joke, lame as it was. "Actually, I always kinda hope I'll absorb some personality traits or something out of the cookie dough. Then I could be perfectly tasty and everybody would love me."   
  
"What's to say they don't now?"  
  
I blurt it out before I can think about it, and I mentally kick my precognition in the ass for not being awake enough to warn me I was going to say something that stupid and embarrassing. It's a contest, really ... which one of us is a brighter shade of red. If we were sitting out by the highway right now, all the cars would stop. Twice.  
  
And for some reason that I don't think about (obviously), I reach out and grab onto her hand.  
  
There's a reason I've gone back to the gloves, other than the whole sort-of-setting-my-mother-on-fire thing. Because I'm surrounded by people like me now, people just as weird and unearthly and just plain fucked up as I am. There's them, and there's us, and everyone once in a while, my brain just turns into Cletus the Slack-Jawed Mutant Optimist mode and I just ... I don't know. Just get stupid, I guess.  
  
That's got to be why I grab her hand, got to be. Like some fucking little kid on a kindergarten date or something. Like nothing's going to happen when we touch except maybe a peck on the lips now and half her peanut butter sandwich later.  
  
I test the waters, my fingers interlacing with hers and tightening before I can stop them, and she inhales raggedly, waiting for the usual vein-popping out of me that she gets from anybody else but not trying to pull her hand away any more than I am. It only takes me a second to realize why it sounds so loud, why it feels like I can hear her breathing rattling through the blood rushing in my ears. Because the air gets sucked in a ragged whoosh from my own lungs, like someone sitting next to us with a giant vacuum or something stealing our breath.  
  
And neither of us can do anything except stare at the point where my skin touches hers, and wait for the inevitable sucking vortex of death to come from both directions exactly like it's supposed to.  
  
Okay.  
  
Any second now ...  
  
Now.  
  
Now?  
  
All right, I don't know if we're going to pass my point of no return of thirty-seven seconds, but we've *definitely* gone light-years past hers.  
  
"Are we doing what I think we're doing?" I hear her ask, her voice a quiet, hoarse whisper.  
  
But I barely hear her.   
  
Just barely.  
  
Because I'm staring at our joined hands. Bare skin to bare skin.  
  
I'm still dreaming. I have to still be dreaming. Because something like this -- something like being able to touch someone like this at all, regardless of all of our complications -- it's just ...  
  
Amazing. Strange. And absolutely fucking perfect all at once.  
  
I have to still be --  
  
"Ronny! Ronny, wake up!"  
  
I jolt up in bed just then, my T-shirt and boxers soaked with sweat, the heat rising off my skin in intense waves like air from the pavement during a heat wave. Everything hits me at once, the fogged-up windows and the thick wall of ice quickly melting between my bed and Bobby's, the way my older brother's staring at me like I've grown an extra head and the way it's a hell of a lot darker in the room than it was a minute ago.  
  
An hour ago. Hell, whatever time it was in the dream.  
  
And the notebook, clutched to my chest like a cheap, cardboard shield.   
  
"Ronny, another vision?"  
  
I can't even bring myself to look over at Bobby, too busy trying to get my breathing to slow down and my heat to a level that's not going to set my brother on fire and my brain to wrap around what I know now had to have been a vision. But my brain ... all my well-trained brain cells want to do is write it down, the Professor will want to read this, the Professor and Bobby and *Rogue* will want to know this.  
  
But stopping myself from putting aside the notebook isn't an option, because the spoiled little inner child in my head has a full-blown temper tantrum about it, screaming and wailing that if I don't take advantage of knowing something like this and having something up on Bobby like *this* ...  
  
Well, then, I've officially lost my mind.  
  
"No, not a vision. Just way too much weird shit on my pizza tonight. Go back to sleep."  
  
"You sure? You look --"  
  
"Positive, Bobby. It's nothing. Trust me." 


End file.
